


Like a Stone

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drowning, Friendship, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lance (Voltron) Has ADHD, Near Death Experiences, Team as Family, it's mentioned - Freeform, lance gets some hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 00:20:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12377106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It was hard for him to remember which way was up. Turning his body over, he started kicking his legs and hoping for the best, but there was no way to know if he was getting closer to the surface or going deeper into the sea. And the water was dense - so dense, and he was getting tired. His muscles were aching and he was cold and shaking. A crack in his helmet broke open and his suit was filling with fluid.Lance was going to die.





	Like a Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before Season 3 because I can't write clone!Shiro without cringing.
> 
> Lance is such a good boy...he's worth so much. Thinking about doing one of these for Keith taking place in Season 4 because he needs some love, too. They all need love, it's just a matter of what I can manage to write.

For a moment, Lance couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing through his head. His abdomen was aching - he had been kicked. Someone kicked him off of the cliff a few moments ago; it was a Galran soldier. He remembered dragging it down with him, gripping the soldier’s ankle as he plunged into the ocean beneath him. The force of the wind made it too hard for him to activate his suit.

Lance had always loved the ocean. He loved going down to Varadero beach back home with his siblings. The water would be warm and shimmer under the sunlight as the waves lapped over the shore. Beneath the surface, he could hear his sisters laughing and his brothers throwing wet sand at each other and knew his mom would be cooking dinner for them back at home. His dad would come by in his pickup truck after work and take them back to the house in time to set the table.

This wasn’t his home, and he couldn’t hear anything when he went under. He couldn’t see anything, either - it was just darkness. Something brushed his shoulder and he couldn’t tell who or what it was, but he thought it to be the soldier he had brought down with him grasping for any help. 

The soldier wanted to live. He wasn’t going to.

It was hard for him to remember which way was up. Turning his body over, he started kicking his legs and hoping for the best, but there was no way to know if he was getting closer to the surface or going deeper into the sea. And the water was dense - so dense, and he was getting tired. His muscles were aching and he was cold and shaking. A crack in his helmet broke open and his suit was filling with fluid. 

Lance was going to die.

And then he stopped fighting. His body was getting warm again, mostly in his chest. There were a few moments where he kept his mouth shut tight, but eventually he tried to take a breath and water flooded his body. There was a burning feeling in his lungs that felt like he was drowning in lava and he could’ve kept struggling a bit longer but going to sleep sounded like a better idea. It would be over soon.

His mind was quiet for once. Where he would normally be asking questions, Lance felt like he knew everything in that moment. Allura would end up piloting his lion and she’d be the best paladin to do so, and they’d take down Zarkon without him. Somehow, that was okay, because he was going home. He’d see his mom again and hug her tight and she would make him promise to never leave her again.

If he was losing consciousness, he couldn’t tell. It was dark either way, but the sensation from his body was leaving and he became numb. There might have been a splash somewhere, maybe someone had come down for him. Lance knew it was too late. 

He slipped away.

The next time he felt something, it was warmth. Some kind of jelly was holding him and everything felt fuzzy. It wasn’t dark anymore - it was blue. Everything was blue, but he could make out some figures on the other side of the glass. They were just standing there, and he finally realized that they were his teammates. 

Someone was saying something. The vibrations were tinny and quick but there was no way for him to figure out who was talking or what it was about. Another voice, low and urgent, responded. No one had moved.

Lance had made it to a cryopod and lived. He was alive, and the jelly around his body was tingling and dissolving. When he had first woken up, he couldn’t move and wasn’t breathing on his own, but his muscles started twitching and he was regaining sensation in his toes and clear air replaced whatever was there before. It was getting cold again, and he was still sleepy. Maybe he had time for another nap before the door would open - they’d send him to his room to rest, anyways. 

And he didn’t really want to talk to them, at all. He was too tired to talk, too tired to make witty replies and too tired to pretend to care that he almost died. Everyone else would pretend that they were super worried about him, all the while knowing that he would actually be fine and they could continue their training for the day. 

He finally heard the hiss of the pod opening, and his limbs felt like lead. Luckily, Hunk was there to catch him with both arms open and pulling him into a hug all while exclaiming how happy he was that Lance had made it. Lance hugged him back with one weak arm as everyone started talking to him.

“You okay, buddy?” Hunk asked as he pulled away. Lance nodded, avoiding his eyes. Hunk looked down at him and raised his eyebrows, knowing that he pretty much lied to his face but pretended to not notice it.

Shiro was next. He didn’t hug Lance, but placed his human hand on his shoulder like his teachers used to do whenever they noticed him being quiet for once or having trouble focusing on his work and getting frustrated with himself. 

He said, “Glad you’re back, Lance. We were all worried about you.”

It looked as though he wanted to say more, but not in front of everyone. Lance could hope that he'd forget about it later.

Instead, Shiro satisfied himself with, “We should get you something to eat - you’be been out for a while..”

Lance nodded, again, but asked, “What happened with the mission?”

They had been taking out another Galra post when they were ambushed by a team of soldiers expecting their arrival. Pidge hadn’t been able to pick up on the signals through the intergalactic radio on their ship, so they had no clue that a group of suicidal aliens was going to attack them. If they hadn’t knocked out the enemies in time, then the whole station would have been detonated. It had been rigged with a bomb long before their arrival.

“We won. The soldier who kicked you - he had the detonator.” _If you didn’t drag him down with you, we all would’ve died_. But Shiro didn’t want to say that, because he didn’t want to say that Lance’s death could have been beneficial. That it was beneficial, and it was simply a silver lining that they got to him in time. “He went down with you.”

Nice. Lance did save the day.

It was just Hunk and him in the kitchen. Everyone else had gone their separate ways, most of them training. Lance sat at the white counter, resting his head on his hand while Hunk tried to make something a little more nutritious than regular food goo. He was angry, Lance could tell. Whenever he would set a bowl down, it would be with a little too much force; or he would look at him with hard eyes until Lance noticed, then would turn away. He hated it when Hunk was mad because he was usually right about whatever made him mad in the first place. 

He slid the cup across the table. Lance bowed his head and thanked him, not minding the bland, spiceless flavor for once. There were other things to bother him, and he’d never thought he’d taste food again. Just his jaw got a bit sore with the toughness of it all.

Hunk had his arms crossed over his chest, staring Lance down. “I know you’re a better swimmer than that, Lance. I’ve seen it.”

“In normal water, totally, Hunk, but -” he started, but Hunk cut him off. 

“Don’t. We went swimming on Ventun, remember? You lasted longer than all of us.”

Ventun’s sea was chilly and thick like melted ice cream, but it was the first time the paladins had been able to swim since they got to space. There was nothing better, Lance had thought, and it wasn’t until his skin had shriveled like a raisin did he consider getting out. 

Lance was quiet, drew his lips into a thin line. “What are you saying, man?”

“You know what I’m saying. Lance. You stopped swimming. You were going to let yourself die.”

He was going to let himself die. It sounded worse when spoken out loud, way worse. He hadn’t had a lot of time to process what had happened since he woke up - he still didn’t know how he got out of the ocean alive. But there was no way he’d let Hunk think that he had stopped fighting, even if he already knew all of it. 

Eventually, he cleared his throat and said, “No way, dude, you’re thinking way out of line here -”

“That water was only fourteen feet deep at most, man. That’s two times the deep end of a standard swimming pool,” Hunk exclaimed. His tone was harsh. “Lance, don’t lie to me right now. Something happened to you, and you stopped fighting just a couple feet from the surface. I - I just wanna know why.”

“I didn’t -”

“Lance.” Hunk moved closer to him. “Please.”

There was a moment of silence. Hunk was right. Lance had given up on struggling at some point, and everyone knew it. No one really knew why, except for him. Kind of. Lance had trouble recollecting his thoughts from his drowning - everything was still fuzzy and he felt his core go cold again, but his hands got warm and clammy. Maybe it was the leftover shock of it all, or maybe he was just really nervous. It was hard to tell.

“I was tired,” he finally said. “And I knew you could all go on. Voltron would go on.”

He didn’t realize that he was crying until a tear dripped into his bowl. Quickly, he brought his hand to his face and tried to wipe it all away. It didn’t work, but he saw that Hunk was crying too. His crying was quiet, more than it had ever been. He walked to the other side of the counter, where Lance was sitting, and hugged him once more.

“We’ve been friends since day one of the garrison. I know just about everything there is to know about you and vice versa. But nothing could ever prepare me for losing you like this - we’ve always stuck it through. You were my best friend in the whole world, and now the entire universe,” Hunk said. “And if you won’t live for yourself - which you totally should - then know that I need you, Lance.”

Lance couldn’t even call it crying anymore. This was full on sobbing, cradling each other in their arms and bawling like starving babies needing a diaper change. There wasn’t much in the universe that felt better than that, and if they both left the room with red eyes and sniffling noses, no one on their team needed to know why. What happened in the kitchen had stayed in the kitchen.

He didn’t deserve Hunk, but Hunk decided that he did. Lance wasn’t going to argue with him.

The showers were steamy and hot after a round of training. He and Keith had sparred for a good hour with both their hands and their bayards, neither of them saying anything beyond a couple quips to lift the mood. Keith wasn’t there to see Lance fall; he was still in his lion, fending off incoming ships. He had been totally silent when Lance first came out of the pod.

It was just a bit strange when Keith stayed on top of him a little longer than usual after knocking him down. He looked angry, but not like Hunk had been. His nostrils flared and he squinted his eyes, like he was deciding whether to cry or yell, but ended up sighing loudly, helping Lance up and sending him on his way.

Lance decided against a bath for obvious reasons, instead letting the shower water wash over his skin as he scrubbed conditioner into his hair. It always got thin and flat after training because of how much he sweated and he hated how it made his head look like a brick. Hunk always told him that it was bad to wash it too often, but just because he was in space doesn’t mean he had to let his hair look gross.

Something was amiss in the bathroom. Not like when he was thirteen and thought his house was haunted and that the ghost liked to peek in on him taking a shower, but definitely like there was another presence in the room. It wasn’t too unnerving - he just needed to know who it was. Everyone had already seen each other before, anyways.

He wrapped his towel around his waist and stepped onto the cool tile. The bathroom was a bit like a gym’s locker room, with the shower area being hidden behind a curtain that lead to the first room which had a couple of benches. The curtain was pretty thin and didn’t do much to give anyone privacy, but living in one castle for a whole month kind of makes it hard to care about it. 

Shiro was sitting on the bench in the middle of the room. His elbows rested on his knees and he was staring at the floor with Lance’s robe in his human hand. Upon noticing Lance’s arrival, Shiro passed it to him and averted his gaze as he put it on. It was awkward, and both of them were clearly uncomfortable. Somehow, Shiro managed to keep his face straight. He beckoned for the younger paladin to sit across from him. 

His voice was gentle yet firm when he said, “Lance, I think we need to talk.”

Lance blinked at him. His heart hardened and he grew quiet like he had done before. However, he wasn’t nervous like he was with Hunk...this was more aloof and cold. Uncharacteristically detached from it all. Shiro had been his hero since the guy graduated as the top pilot in his class and was a living legend amongst the garrison. Now he was his commander, and something about it all made him angry. Lance couldn’t tell why.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was flat, finally meeting Shiro’s gaze.

Shiro cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Hunk, uh, confided in me that you could’ve made it out of that on your own. That, at some point, you might’ve...stopped fighting. He kept saying that something was wrong, and I think he was right.”

Lance, again, said, “Okay.”

“What’s up, buddy?” 

He shrugged. “Not much.”

“Lance.”

“Okay, fuck. You know what’s up?” Lance said. “We’re millions of miles away from home and we never got to say goodbye to our families. I got into the garrison knowing that they’d send some money to my family each month and I don’t even know if they’re still getting it. We were having trouble making ends meet after my dad died so I went to Florida by myself and got in on a scholarship. I was already so far away from my family.”

“And now I’m in space, flying a giant blue cat that can somehow read my mind but still lets me be the most useless member of the team. Even in situations where I am somehow the best choice to send in, you still choose Keith or Pidge, and god knows I love them both, but all you’re doing is putting them through extra stress. Keith came back from the Blade of Marmora half-dead, and you knew it was never good idea to bring him along. So why did you?”

“I -”

“When I was in the water, I got _tired_. A-and it was getting in my suit and, I don’t know, it wasn’t hard to think that you all could go on without me. Because no matter what I do to help, it always causes another problem or gets canceled out by some other bullshit. Shiro, I was tired.”

He found himself standing up and felt his face twitch with frustration. Dammit, he wasn’t going to cry again. Especially not in front of Shiro, so he covered his face with his arm and tried to wipe it away again. It wasn’t so much that he was sad - he was mad. It wasn’t fair, and this was the first time he got to really talk about it.

Lance wasn’t even looking at him. “Everyone always gets frustrated with me about, like, my ADHD and stuff but they don’t even think how hard it is for me to deal with. All my old teachers would either pity me or punish me and it’s happening again all the way out here so I stopped swimming. I know I stopped swimming and I’ve already cried about it with Hunk. so what does it matter now?”

And then there were two arms around his shoulders, one human and one prosthetic. Lance stood in a dazed shock, then placed one hand on Shiro’s back and rested his forehead on his shoulder and embraced it. Neither of them wept like he had with Hunk, or at least Lance didn’t. If Shiro did, it wasn’t showing.

“It matters because you’re a part of this team,” Shiro said, having pulled back from the hug but keeping his hands on his shoulder and staring him down. “And you’re not useless. I - I wanna say I have no idea where you got that idea, but you’re right. I haven’t been the best leader for you all and I am so sorry that you had to go through that alone.”

Lance was still looking at his feet when Shiro added, “Voltron would be nothing without you. Lance, you keep everyone _grounded_ , both literally and metaphorically.”

“Your family would be so proud of you. They will love you no matter where in the universe you are. Hell, we all do. Talk to us next time.”

There was no one in the main room except for Pidge, who was huddled on the couch with her computer. Lance flopped onto the cushion across from her. No doubt she knew what happened - she was the first one who saw him fall and probably the only one to notice that he didn’t make much of an effort to stop it. He remembered hearing her yell his name amidst all the confusion.

They were both silent, like he was with Keith, and it was okay. Lance fiddled with his bayard while she worked on what looked like a map of their quadrant with little purple specks floating on the screen. At some point, she moved over to his side of the couch and rested her back on his side, enjoying their subtle intimacy.

Pidge didn’t want to talk about it, and neither did Lance. Hell, he had already done it twice. He was tired; however, this time he could go to sleep knowing he would wake up in the same castle with the same friends who had become his family. There was still a ways to go, but they were making progress.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Allura and Coran also love and support Lance, I just wanted this to be about the paladins this time.


End file.
